Brain Dead Ensemble

Brain Dead Ensemble grew from a performance we did at NIME 2017 in Copenhagen with Thor Magnusson, as ‘2FCT’. Thor plays an instrument that he designed, called the Threnoscope.

The Threnoscope is a spatialised drone instrument that is played using live coding. Drones are programmed to move around a circular path, and the instrument is typically diffused through four or more speakers. With 2FCT, we set up the Threnoscope so that in addition to a multichannel speaker setup, the two feedback cellos also received signals and became part of the diffusion system. This had some interesting effects in performance, where a feedback cello will become saturated by a drone as it passes through, changing the dynamics of the instrument. It links the instruments together into a larger shared instrument.

Following the NIME gig, Thanos built a double bass version of the feedback cello, and joined us to form Brain Dead Ensemble.

We’ve played three gigs so far at: Emute Lab 0 in Brighton, ICLI in Porto and Spirit of Gravity in Brighton. We have also been recording, and will be releasing something very soon.